Kennedy Assassination: Evidence Seen by JFK’s Doctor Suppressed

ARRB Smothers George Burkley Comment

Rear Admiral George Burkley MD. Despite his position, his face was never seen at the Warren Commission Hearings.
Photo credit: US Navy

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The highly anticipated release of long-withheld US government documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is scheduled for October 26. In the runup to this event, the media have devoted more attention to this history-altering political murder than at any time since the Oliver Stone film “JFK” came out in 1991.

As one of the outlets digging deep into the tragedy, WhoWhatWhy has pointed out that many questions remain unanswered and many key issues are yet unresolved. Accordingly, we are dedicating more articles to the topic leading up to the highly-anticipated data dump, and we are putting together a crack team to analyze the documents once they are released.

— WhoWhatWhy Staff

The story of Captain James Young, a Navy doctor who said a bullet was found in President John F. Kennedy’s limousine on the day of his assassination, could have been corroborated by the president’s own physician. However, for unknown reasons, JFK’s doctor — Rear Admiral George G. Burkley, who was present in the trauma room in Dallas, and also at Kennedy’s autopsy — never got a chance to talk about the events of that day.

Below is proof that Burkley wanted to testify, and that what he had to say was suppressed at several levels. What survives is a memo concerning Burkley’s belief that other people participated in Kennedy’s assassination. Whether this opinion is based on the discovery of the bullet described in our earlier story, or something else, we will never know.

Although Kennedy was shot in the back, indicating the presence of a shooter behind him, there was also a suggestion of a shooter in front, according to some of the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, including the chief of Neurosurgery: Because of the condition of the skull and brain, he had the impression JFK was struck from the front or from the side, as opposed to the official conclusion of all shots from behind. Did Burkley have the same impression?

1964

.

The year of the Warren Commission hearings. Thousands of people were called to testify, but Burkley was not.

1976

.

In 1976, the US House of Representatives established the Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the murders of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Burkley tried to reach out to them through his lawyer, William Illig, as reflected in a March 18,1977 Memo to the File, written by Richard A. Sprague, chief counsel to the HSCA. Here is a key excerpt from that memo:

This opinion — “that others must have participated” — is reflected in the JFK Library Oral History Interview of Burkley in 1967. When asked if he agreed with the Warren Commision as to the number of bullets that entered Kennedy’s body, Burkley responded, “I would not care to be quoted on that.”

1998

.

In 1992, Congress had passed the JFK Records Collection Act which, in turn, created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). The purpose of the act was “to provide for the expeditious disclosure of records relevant to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” This resulted in the publication of the Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board(ARRB), prepared especially for the media.

Every time there’s an official investigation into the Kennedy assassination, all kinds of astounding facts come to light during hearings behind closed doors — but those facts are buried beneath mountains of minutiae, often recorded on faded Xerox paper.

In contrast, the reader-friendly books and reports summarizing these hearings, such as The Warren Report, published in 1964, are all well-packaged and pre-digested for easy swallowing by the media and the public.

From these summaries, you would never guess what was in the material their authors were supposed to have summarized. And they contain many more words devoted to undermining the witnesses.

The Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board(ARRB) contains stunning examples of deception based on euphemism, vaguery, and omission. What follows is how the authors of the Final Report handled the memo from George Burkley’s lawyer to the HSCA, in their chapter, “Medical Evidence.”

There were three closely related problems that seriously impeded the Review Board’s efforts to complete the documentary record surrounding the autopsy: a cold paper trail, faded memories, and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. An example of the cold paper trail comes from Admiral George Burkley, who was President Kennedy’s military physician and the only medical doctor who was present both during the emergency treatment at Parkland Memorial Hospital and at the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In the late 1970’s, at the time of the HSCA’s investigation, Dr. Burkley, through his attorney, suggested to the HSCA that he might have some additional information about the autopsy. (Page 123)

They did finally admit that Burkley believed in conspiracy. But they did so without acknowledging that his belief was based on first-hand information, and they buried it in a place where you would not expect to find it — in the chapter “Pursuit of Records and Information from Non-Federal Sources.”

Burkley’s personal attorney apparently told the HSCA that his client believed there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Mr. Illig, Burkley’s attorney, however, is now deceased. The Review Board staff asked Burkley’s daughter, the executor of his estate, to sign a waiver allowing the Review Board access to papers at Illig’s law firm, but she declined to sign and return the waiver. (Page 131)

Notice the wording: he “apparently told the HSCA” — as if it had only been a rumor; as if they could not confirm the rumor because Illig is dead; as if no paperwork existed documenting Burkley’s comments to Illig which, in turn, were conveyed to the HSCA. That Memo to the File still exists:

We may never know what it was George Burkley saw or heard that made him believe Kennedy was killed by conspiracy, but he certainly wasn’t the last to believe it.

Correction 1/22/2019, 2:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Captain James Young himself found a bullet in the limousine. Young inspected the bullet, but it was found by others.

Related

Related

JFK Assassination, Only 3 People had the Means, Motive, Opportunity and POWER to Organise the Certain Killing. LBJ, J Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles. The Soviet Union`s KGB was the Most Deadly Intelligence and Assassination Organisation in 1963 said that LBJ DID IT.

Great discussion. Despite several disagreements in the relative minutiae, all are agreed that there were multiple gunmen ergo a conspiracy to both murder the President and to conceal the true perpetrators. The WC and media coverage are all part of this same conspiracy. Furthermore, Oswald was sheep-dipped with Russian and Cuban connections so as to use the assassination as a False Flag to provide the Casus Belli for WWIII which the JCS felt they could win the nuclear holocaust. It is important to understand the full implications of JFK veto on Operation Northwoods. All this energy wasted on minutiae is exactly what they want. Forget it. This was a Coup and remains so. There is no mystery and no more evidence required. Read “JFK & The Unspeakable”

The JFK hit was a huge plot, not a minor conspiracy. There is evidence that essentially every element from the Bethesda autopsy was faked/corrupted/lost – many point to extensive evidence that JFK’s corpse was extremely worked over before it even got to the autopsy table or x-ray machines. The number of discrepancies are countless, and some technicians from Bethesda who claimed to have secrets were murdered. In addition to his lack of testimony and suppressed statements there are several other points that possibly link Burkley to conspiracy – 1) Shenon reports that he urged Jackie to request that the body be taken out of Dallas and taken to Bethesda Naval – a maneuver which was arguably not even legal in the context of a murder investigation in Dallas, 2) It is also reported that Burkley hovered around the autopsy, asked the doctors not to poke around too much, 3) he asked the autopsy docs not to report any findings connected with his claim that JFK suffered Addison’s disease and was taking sex hormones for that condition – this disease would be very rare in someone fitting JFK’s bio profile – was it a fake diagnosis that he didn’t want revealed? 4) He was a Deep State military guy who was only connected to JFK after he became POTUS.

John Burkley was the one who did not want to do a full autopsy if they didn’t need to. And yes he was involved in a cover-up after the fact but that does not mean he was part of an assassination plot. If you read Dr. Young’s interview you will see that it was Dr. Young’s belief that Burkley ordered Humes to destroy his notes on the orders of RFK who did not want JFK’s Addison’s disease made public. The fact that JFK had Addison’s disease was reported in the medical literature and people at that time correctly deduced that it was JFK who was the patient in question in the case report. It was not a fake diagnosis as Burkley had Solu-Cortef available and gave it to the Parkland physician’s treating JFK. I suggest you read Dr. Young’s full interview and see what type of physician Burkley actually was. Young worked side by side with him for several years.

Huge plots involving the CIA/FBI etc. do not start with everyone sitting around in a room hearing about what is going to happen and agreeing to it. It is rather a case of huge networks of people following orders, usually hearing false stories about why and what is going to happen, but still following the orders and keeping it all secret. The CIA/FBI also have the possibility to replace anyone who knows something they “shouldn’t” with a new substitute, assuming their identity. Did Burkley maintain his original identity self all those years…probably not. What did the Burkley of Nov. 1963 know? He probably didn’t know that JFK was going to be shot or where that would happen (there were other plots set up for Chicago, Tampa, and Miami which did not come off in the weeks prior to the Dallas hit).

Burkley said in his 1967 JFK Library oral history interview that he did not want to be quoted on whether he agreed with the WC on the number of bullets which struck JFK. In 1977 he told the HSCA that he knew that more than one gunman was involved as the article states. Burkley knew there was a conspiracy. The only way Burkley could have come to this conclusion is via findings at the autopsy. Have you ever asked yourself the question of what would have happened if Earl Rose had done the autopsy in Dallas?

Deep State was determined to do whatever it took to coverup their murder. Rose reported that the Secret Service was at the point of pulling a gun on him when they insisted on taking the body, illegally from Parkland. There are a long list of witnesses from the Dallas area who died suspiciously within a few years of the event. My theory is that the hit didn’t go according to plan because Connally was wounded but not killed. If Connally had not been wounded or he was dead then the limo would probably not have gone to Parkland at all – the likely plan was for it to go straight to the airport. Robert Harris has an interesting video on YT that tries to figure out the location of various shooters & who might have shot Connally.

[…] JFK’s physician repeatedly not called to testify about assassination, despite being present at Parkland Hospital after shooting and during autopsy. “(In 1964) thousands of people were called to testify, but (Rear Admiral George G.) Burkley was not…. In 1976, the US House of Representatives established the Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the murders of Kennedy and Martin Luther King…. Dr. Burkley advised (the Committee) that although he, Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President Kennedy in Dallas, he had never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.” https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/17/kennedy-assassination-evidence-seen-jfks-doctor-suppressed/ […]

It is incredulous that this article doesn’t refer to the two books by Dr. Charles Crenshaw, who operated on Kennedy at Parkland Hospital that state very clearly that JFK was shot 3 times, all from the front. A statement from an MD, who admits that he surpassed the truth because of the intimidating presence of government representatives (allegedly FBI) should have been reported on extensively, and taken very seriously by everyone in the Democratic Party. They should have demanded an open inquisition while Dr. Crenshaw was alive. Failing to do so has further empowered the GOP to lie, and lie , and lie. Like they did about Hillary, and Bill Clinton; and others.

Dr. Crenshaw was not at the autopsy and did not have the benefit of seeing the wounds close up. There was a single shot from the front , after an initial shot to the head from behind, which took off the top rear of JFK’s skull ( Delta fragment) and ejected it onto the trunk. It was a Democratic administration that was in power when the WC was investigating the assassination.

On November 22, 1963, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, an accomplished surgeon, tried to save John F. Kennedy’s life, caring for him on the operating table at Parkland Hospital — and then days later, the life of the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. So of any human being on earth, Dr. Crenshaw’s statements are to be taken with utmost seriousness.

Jackie Kennedy wrote in a message to be read after her death that she believed LBJ to be behind her husband’s murder.

I think that these observations shed more light on what happened than any of the other multitude of books on the subject.

Dr. Young’s opinion only adds to the credibility. When Oswald was murdered in front of everyone, you can be sure people knew why, and feared for the same if they spoke out. Dr. Crenshaw kept quiet until Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” came out. Then he came out too.

Your assertions are at odds with most of the authoritative WC critics, including Cyril Wecht and David Mantik. The Bethesda autopsy was badly bungled – on purpose – by military brass as most critics acknowledge. Thus the observations of the Parkland staff and of people like FBI officer Siebert and O’Neill should be taken more seriously since they are generally in agreement with each other and in accord with the video evidence which indicates a head shot from the front. These debates are very tedious so that is all I want to say on the matter.

Dr. Wecht is the one who dissented with the FPP and believed that JFK was shot twice in the head. Neither Dr. Wecht or any of the radiologists for the government noticed a pattern of intersecting fracture lines, Puppe’s Law, which indicates JFK was shot twice in the head. Look it up. What is tedious is when individuals don’t want to look at the films which show the head initially going forward. You might want to watch the flare of reflected light from the windshield at frame 314 after it was cracked from the inside from the first shot that went forward through JFK’s head and fragmented.

Yeah, right. Why should anyone believe you? Dr. Crenshaw knew what he saw, and cared enough about it to publish 2 books. There’s al lot of people throwing disinformation on this, and you’re one of them. Dr. Crenshaw was the most salient and credible witness, and Democrats should have held senate and Congressional meetings to act on what he exposed.

You do realize that even forensic pathologists can have a hard time determining whether a wound is one of entry or exit simply by its appearance. It is in the medical literature. Dr. Crenshaw like some forensic pathologists can be mistaken. What he saw looked exactly like an entry wound hence his initial opinion just like Perry. I am the only diagnostic radiologist outside governmental review panels who has seen the original authentic autopsy x-rays and photos numerous times. If you wish to give primacy to eyewitness observations over photos, films and x-rays you are also welcome to your own opinion but you will be wrong.

One of the easiest things to determine is an entry wound compared to exit. We’ve see the live film. JFK’s brain are blown out of the back of his head in a horrific spray of blood mist that went all over the back of the car. Jackie held his brains in her hands. She knew. Kennedy was murdered, and the Government didn’t represent the people, or pursue the truth. It represented the group that murdered him, and rendered the United States of America, and its flag, to the same level of a 3rd world dictatorship. A level we need to rise out of, and Dr. Crenshaw tried to help right our ship.

Maybe you are to young to remember the make-up of political parties, at the time of JFK’s assassination, that allows your fallacious logic to infer “The democratic party” was responsible for the white-wash. You are omitting Pres. Eisenhower’s admonition about the “Military Industrial Complex”. You also fail to acknowledge the rampant racism and fascism espoused by conservative ministers and funded by major corporate leaders and supported by their influential puppets at all levels of government, for four(4) decades, right up to US involvement in WWII. Did you know 2,500 US corporations colluded with the enemy during the war while hindering US efforts, for personal profit, and that their treason was kept quiet from the US public?
If you are going to make an argument, try moving beyond the hyperbole you grew up with.
Oh, here is a little info about the democratic party from 1964 to bolster my reply to your short sighted logic as quoted from the Conservapedia
“The American South had a long tradition of electing conservative
Democrats to office, including in Presidential elections until they
broke from the Democrats in 1964 to vote for Barry Goldwater,
the Republican nominee. From 1948 to the 1970s an even more
conservative wing of the party, mostly from the South, was called
“Dixiecrats”. This Dixiecrat wing of the party has been essentially
defunct since the 1970s, when the House contingent was led by the late Joe Waggonner of Louisiana. A few former Dixiecrats, including Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, were early converts to the Republican Party,
foreshadowing a long trend of conservatives leaving the Democrats and
joining the Republicans that continued through the 1980s and 1990s.”

There exists film of Mac Kilduff, JFK’s press secretary on the Texas trip, announcing the president’s death at Parkland Hospital the afternoon of the assassination. Kilduff tells reporters that he has just talked to Dr. Burkley and to one of the ER doctors, Malcolm Perry, and that according to them President Kennedy had died of a bullet shot to his brain, at which point he, Kilduff, using his right index finger, points to a spot on his right temple above and behind his eye. No shot from behind struck President Kennedy there. Find the film on Google or YouTube.

The CBS News/ITEK study shows a double motion of the head, first forward and then backward, which was due to two gunshot wounds the first from behind and the second from the front. It was the correct opinion at the time of the press conference that he was struck in the head from the front. After careful observation at the autopsy they correctly found the first entry wound to the head from behind. None of the Parkland doctors examined the wounds in the detail that the autopsy team did. The top rear of JFK’s head was intact after the first wound and it was the second shot to the head from the Grassy Knoll which removed the Delta fragment while leaving the overlying scalp attached to the head.

You’re making things up. Of course Dr. Crenshaw could see the bullet entry wounds, and the fact that the back of Kennedy’s brain was blown off. The Zapruder film shows the horrific effect of the shot to the head, and the manner in which JFK’s body reacted. There were NO entry wounds from the back. Oswald could never have made the shot from that distance, 300 yards (3 football fields in length) at a small moving target, through the foliage of a tree.

The distance from the TSBD to the limo at Z-313 is ~300 feet not 300 yards. At that point in time there was no foliage blocking the view. I suggest you look at a diagram of Dealey Plaza and take the measurements. Look at the Secret Service re-enactment film and see that the view is not blocked. The Zapruder, Muchmore and Nix films all show that the head moved forward 1/10th of a second prior to it reversing and then going backward and yes the top rear of the skull was blown off by this second shot to the head from the Grassy Knoll and this is the Delta fragment which contains a portion of an exit wound in one corner.

My mistake, yes, 300 feet/100 yards. Shot still not doable: The required level of marksmanship would have been virtually unattainable and the required firing rate (5.6 to 8.3 seconds from first to third shot, depending on whose estimate one believes) impossible for the World War II surplus bolt-action rifle Oswald supposedly used. Tree branches are part of the foliage and were a factor. Oswald did not kill Kennedy. You’re likely part of the group throwing disinformation at the reality. And a Nation that moves forward on lies is weakened greatly.

Correct. No one has ever duplicated the feat attributed to Oswald who barely qualified as an infantryman when last tested years earlier. His purported rifle was inoperative as the WC showed. No one has ever been able to pick up the busted Mannlicher Carcano rifle, cold, and hit a small moving target, twice, about 90 feet away in 8 seconds. Yes. Pretty much impossible for anyone. Oswald was, indeed a patsy with ties to the FBI.

OK. No one could make that shot you claim. Then tell me at what distance and from what position the shots were taken and the exact frame they struck. I am not arguing that it took more than one gunman to accomplish the assassination. Whoever fired from the TSBD missed both times and was not a murderer. He hit Connally in the chest not JFK and the second shot from the TSBD struck and dented the windshield frame. It is highly unlikely that Oswald fired those shots.

Others have argued in detail about the fatal shots that hit JFK. Who fired the other shots is the issue … there were plenty of perps hanging around Dallas that November day. RFK immediately concluded the assassination had the MO of a CIA- Mafia hit. Nixon reached the same conclusion.

Oswald’s right palm print was found by the FBI on the under side of the barrel, covered up by the wood stock. It obviously got there when the rifle was disassembled. Three experts identified the print as his.

The paraffin test revealed nitrates on his hands, but not his cheek. Since he had later fired his handgun killing Officer Tippett, the nitrates on his hands couldn’t have been given any importance for the JFK investigation. Experts commenting on the paraffin test stated that you don’t find nitrates on the cheek after firing a rifle, since a rifle doesn’t have the space through which gases escape like you find on handguns.

I highly doubt that Oswald was the shooter. He most likely brought his rifle to the TSBD to give it to someone else. Had a marksman had the opportunity to practice with the rifle beforehand he would have noticed immediately that the sight was off and corrected it. You are not going to count on a shooter with a sight that is off to kill JFK. There were only two shots fired from the TSBD but three shell casings were found. Why? I would suggest that the sniper on the 6th floor didn’t know what was in the chamber when the rifle was given to him. It could have been a live round, an expended casing or have been empty. The assassin could only find out by working the bolt and he ejected a casing from an already fired round. When was that bullet fired? Most likely by Oswald in his attempt on Walker’s life. He didn’t eject the casing and hid the rifle to get it later and never ejected the empty shell casing hence it was ejected by the sniper seeing if a live round was in the chamber. If Oswald’s rifle had been somehow stolen without his knowledge prior to the assassination or he had given it to a third party sometime before the assassination how did he come to the conclusion so quickly that shots fired in Dealey Plaza on that day implicated him. As soon as he heard that people had been shot he left and armed himself as soon as possible. And as others have pointed out they was no residue on his face which should have been there if he fired a rifle that day.

Ridiculous. The WC notes that the military sharpshooters who tested the “Oswald” rifle had to add parts to have an operational weapon fit for purpose… No one in the business thinks that such an adjustment can be “made cold” and hit a moving target twice in a few seconds.

NO ONE has replicated that feat under these conditions with the Oswald rifle.

The Mannlicher-Carcano was not the murder weapon… nor are the wounds consistent with shots from the TSBD… since the “entrance wound” was lower than the exit … That’s why Gerald Ford tried to change the autopsy report.

The entrance wound in the back is lower than the exit in front- the bullet deflected upwards as it passed through JFK so it couldn’t strike Connally also. And yes two shots were fired from the 6th floor and both missed JFK- one struck Connally and the second struck and dented the windshield frame. Zapruder blurred his film from these gunshot reports at frames 227 and 331 each 6 frames after shots were fired from the TSBD. It took him 8 frames to eacct to the two shots fired from the Dal-Tex building at 207 and 318. Blurs at 318 and 331 are ,8 seconds apart and less than the 2 seconds minimum it takes to fire a Mannlicher-Carcano twice. A sniper’s nest was built on the 6th floor. People saw two individuals at the window prior to the assassination. People saw a rifle being pulled back from the window after the last shot. Individuals on the 5th floor heard shots emanating from above them. The exit wound in the throat had all the characteristics of an entry wound but then the Parkland doctors never got to see the whole body.

Randy… 1) You’re just giving me Magic Bullet Part1… there is no evidence that bullets behave this way when they hit real bones and flesh… as with the miraculous shot sLHO was supposed to have made with a busted rifle, the Magic Bullets have never been replicated behaving this way… certainly not making hairpin turns inside and outside the body

2) The bullet hole in the windshield came from the front, not the rear

3) The Parkland ER docs were far more experienced than the clumsy amateurs at Bethesda… they certainly saw JFK’s head at 360 degrees and that the right occipital lobe was blown out… which is not what the Bethesda autopsy images showed… and then there was the Gerry Ford incident when he tried to change the autopsy record because, well, the bullet holes weren’t lining up to indicate a shot striking JFK from the TCBD. The famous Parkland press announcement of JFK’s death was referred tp as a strike in the right temple..

4) It’s possible shots were fired (not by LHO) from the TSBD, but didn’t strike JFK… Using Occam’s razor rules: all the evidence points to fatal shots from the front.

If you check out the HSCA and witnesses at the London trial, you’ll find that many people have repeated Oswald’s firing timing. All of the hoopla about what was wrong with the Carcano and his expertise with the rifle are fiction. There are books worth of witness to refute the concocted claims.

NOTE: www won’t allow links to be posted in comments… you’ll have to track down the original WC reports. Highlights quoted below..

NOT TRUE. Calmo.. the test firings were with high-performance modern weapons …
If you can cite a specific case of someone replicating the feat attributed to Oswald with a beat up M-C rifle that misaligned after
every shot and could only fire with iron sites, then let’s see it.

The “hoopla” you refer came directly from the WC— several pages of investigation and testimony.

Even after fixing some of the gun’s mechanical problems, and despite
firing at stationary targets from an easier vantage point, they [ military sharpshooters] failed
to achieve the combination of accuracy and speed demanded of the lone
gunman: two hits out of three, within about six seconds (see Warren Commission Hearings, vol.3, p.446 and pp.403–10).”

“The Mannlicher Carcano rifle that was discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, however, was a “cheap old weapon” (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.4, p.29).

It was examined by the FBI’s firearms specialist, who stated that:

“Every time we changed the adjusting screws to move the crosshairs in the telescopic sight in one direction it also affected the movement of the impact or the point of impact in the other
direction. … We fired several shots and found that the shots were not all landing in the same place, but were gradually moving away from the point of impact.”

(Warren Commission Hearings, vol.3, p.405)

Ronald Simmons of the US Army also examined the rifle, and found problems with the bolt and the trigger mechanism:

“There were several comments made — particularly with respect to the amount of effort required to open the bolt. … There was also comment made about the trigger pull … in the first stage the trigger is relatively free, and it suddenly required a greater pull to actually fire the weapon. … The pressure to open the bolt was so great that that we tended to move the rifle off the target.”

(ibid., pp.449–51)

Most people are stunned by these findings and testimony, and correctly conclude that Oswald could not have pulled off the JFK assassination
with the weapon he was supposed to have used.

However, you are free to deny reality and buy whatever was served up by Dulles, LBJ, etc etc

In a 4-part 1967 TV special hosted by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, CBS investigators used an identical Mannlicher-Carcano and a constructed setup to duplicate the shooting scene. Eleven volunteer marksmen, after practicing, took turns firing 3-round clips. The average time of the eleven to fire the three shots was 5.6 seconds, much less than the 8.4 seconds Oswald had available. One hit 2 out of 3 targets in less than 5 seconds. The best shooter made 3 out of 3 hits in 5.2 seconds (firing accurately every 1.7 seconds) clearly besting Oswald’s marksmanship. It was believed by some investigators that Oswald used the iron sights, which he had learned in his Marines training are faster than scope.

As for the accuracy of Oswald’s rifle, Ronald Simmons, the chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Department of the Army, had his people test-fire Oswald’s Carcano (the exact one found on the 6th floor) 47 times. He testified the rifle was “quite accurate”–in fact, just as accurate as the American military rifle being used at the time, the M-14. The exact type of rifle was at the time of the assassination being used by the Italian NATO rifle team in competition.

My hubby had a gun shop, and I used to order these Carcanos wholesale from the same Chicago dealer where Oswald bought his. They were perfectly good rifles, even though they weren’t as popular among our customers as American rifles because of the off-breed caliber, making ammo less available and higher priced. My hubby and many of the customers in the shop were ex-military, and they all — to a single man — were astounded that anyone would think the shots Oswald fired were difficult. Like us, everyone we knew who had anything to do with shooting couldn’t figure out what part of what Oswald did could have been considered more than any one person could have done alone.

What’s been amazing to me was seeing how so much of the information released on TV at the time of the assassination — usually by Dallas PD, and published worldwide — has during the intervening 54 years been squashed and treated as nonexisting because it interferes with several dozen of the hundreds of conspiracy theories. It’s laughable to hear people deny things we were seeing moments after they happened.

17 out of 37 times, the bolt couldn’t be worked in 6 seconds.
In other words 45% failure rate. The FBI couldn’t get Oswald’s rifle to
sight in without putting in shims. Add to the fact Oswald did not have
nitrates (i.e. gunpowder residue) on his face. I’m sorry this is
supposed to be an “ironclad” case?﻿

Oswald would have had to use iron sights, and that was not simulated.

The “quite accurate” quote is ridiculous and contradicted by the other testimony.

Also, there was no tree in the way of the CBS simulation… and the shooters were sharpshooters… Oswald was barely qualified as a marksman.

Go back and read the WC sections on the Oswald rifle. No one has replicated the Oswald feat.

The Parkland ER docs saw that the back of JFK’s head was blown off… that’s missing on the autopsy photos… indicating some type of tampering

Crenshaw also say the small bullet hole in JFK’s throat… Zapruder shows that JFK reached for his throat with both hands… the purported entry wound in the back is lower than the exit wound in the throat, an impossibility if the shot came from the Book Depository.

BTW …Osawld can be ruled out as an assassin… the WC reports that his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was inoperable as a precision weapon and needed parts added to support the scope and find a target… military sharpshooters fared poorly at stationary targets even with shims added. Oswald was a lousy shot.

I have watched several documentaries dealing with the second gunman theory and all have shown that the storm drain is too low to the ground to have accommodated a gunman. As for the trajectory of the second or third bullet it is my understanding that the reason Mrs. Kennedy reached toward the back of the car was in a attempt to retrieve part of her husband’s skull. Which leads me to wonder how a bullet fired from the back as we have been led to believe could have caused the skull piece to go backwards. Seems to me only a bullet fired from the front could have had that effect. I vividly remember the day of the assasination as does everyone alive at the time It is impossible to describe the shock and grief we all felt at the loss of president Kennedy.

You are absolutely right but the first bullet to the head, from behind, ejected the Harper and Weitzman skull fragments out into Dealey Plaza and two smaller skull fragments downward into the limo itself. These arose exclusively from the front of the head as documented in the CBS News/ITEK study. ITEK stopped looking for particulate matter before the Delta fragment was ejected from the top rear of the head backwards.

I suggest people look at the autopsy photos on the net. There are two distinct sets and the wounds are different in each. One is definitively JFK. The other set is someone altogether. The photos that are of JFK show his head emptied out like a pumpkin, consistent with a shot that entered from the front and blew out the back of the skull, as testimony verifies from both those who were present and the doctors who first examined him at Parkland Hospital. If the Zapruder film is watched carefully JFK’s head is seen going back and UP and to the left. Penn Jones mentioned a shot from the storm drain in his book ‘Pardon My Grief’ It is a very good theory and follows the probable trajectory of the bullet. The CIA may shed a veil or two in these papers but that doesn’t mean the details will bring anyone closer to unraveling the matter.

The upward movement of the head is simply related to rotation of the head as it is pushed backwards and does not indicate that the bullet was on an upward trajectory. The shot from the front came from the Grassy Knoll where many eyewitnesses heard it originate from. The position of the shooter on the Grassy Knoll was correctly deduced by Dr. Barger from the DictaBelt tape. The photos of JFK are authentic as there is a one to one correspondence of the fracture pattern seen on them and the skull x-rays. I have seen the images from the roll of 120 film exposed to light during the autopsy and the original photos and it is the same body on the same table at the same time.

It is obvious that Dr. Burkley would only know whether more than one gunman was involved would be via observations at the autopsy. The bullet which entered JFK’s back to exit his throat wasn’t evidence for a second gunman and neither was the bullet that entered the back of his head to exit the front. The only evidence at the autopsy would have been the second shot to the head from the front which dislodged the Delta skull fragment onto the trunk of the limo. Its proper orientation at the autopsy indicated a second shot to the head from the front coming shortly after an initial shot from the rear. These two closely spaced shots were recorded at 144.9 seconds and 145.15 seconds on the DictaBelt tape. Dr. Burkley indicated that he did not want to be quoted on the number of bullets which struck JFK. If 1 bullet it would be ridiculous. If 2 bullets he should have had no problem with agreeing with the WC. If it were three, the third would have been the second shot to the head from the front and Burkley in his 1967 JFK oral history didn’t want to reveal that. I would conclude that it was not the bullet that Dr. Young saw which led Burkley to the conclusion that more than one gunman was involved.

In his well regarded book, “Reasonable Doubt,” Hurt reported that, “In 1982 Dr. Burkley told the author (Hurt) in a telephone conversation that he believed that President Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy.” But when Hurt contacted Burkley to arrange a face-to-face interview – two months after they had exchanged agreeable letters, “The doctor responded with an abrupt refusal to discuss any aspect of the case.”